Tag Archives: Corporations

City councilor among those who doesn’t understand why “a company as rich as Amazon would need nearly $2 billion in public money for its expansion plans at a time when New York desperately needs money for affordable housing, transportation, infrastructure, and education.”

Critics say Amazon has contributed to rising housing costs in Seattle as well as heavy traffic and income inequality. (Photo: Kiewic/Flickr/cc)

While business-friendly politicians applauded Amazon’s decision to establish two new headquarters in New York and just outside Washington DC, local officials, residents, and critics of the “race to the bottom” the $800 billion corporation held in its search for new office locations denounced the move on Tuesday, decrying the effects the new headquarters will likely have on the chosen cities.

After a 14-month-long process in which Amazon pitted cities against one another in a competition to see who would offer the company the most enticing tax incentives and other perks, the neighborhoods of Long Island City in Queens, New York and Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia were named as Amazon’s new second and third homes. Continue reading →

“The most eye-catching conclusion,” says the author, is the Trump nominee’s inconsistent reasoning coupled with an “overwhelming tendency to reach conclusions favorable to corporations.”

Critics of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh protested at Foley Square in New York City on Aug. 26. (Photo: Ivan Pereira/Twitter)

Bolstering calls for the Senate to block President Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, an analysis out Wednesday reveals that Kavanaugh has overwhelmingly sided with corporate power over public interest while serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit over the past 12 years.

The new report (pdf), authored by Public Citizen president Robert Weissman, found that Kavanaugh ruled against public interest 87 percent of the time for more than 100 split-decision cases involving consumer and regulatory issues and administrative law, environmental protection, worker rights, alleged police or human rights abuses, and antitrust enforcement. Continue reading →

New survey also shows that 60 percent believe the Republican plan will “mainly favor” the rich

For months Republicans and President Donald Trump have worked to convince Americans that massive tax cuts for the top one percent and the largest corporations would somehow primarily benefit the working class, but a new Washington Post/ABC News poll published Friday finds that the public isn’t buying the GOP’s “propaganda.”

Despite House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) insistence on Thursday that his party’s proposals are geared toward helping “the middle class families in this country who deserve a break,” only 17 percent of Americans believe the GOP tax plan “mainly favors” the middle class, while 60 percent believe their plan would primarily benefit the wealthiest. Continue reading →

The environmental group Clean Air Moms Action released a new ad campaign Monday urging voters to fight back against two pending Republican anti-regulation laws.

The ad is being run in five states where Democratic incumbent senators will be up for re-election in highly-anticipated races in 2018. It features car safety advocate Janette Fennell, who shares a personal story of how an automobile regulation saved her life—the kind of regulation that could be at risk if Congress passes the Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA) and the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act. Continue reading →

Minimum-wage workers can’t afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment, but the GOP thinks it’s massive corporations that need an income boost

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, corporate profits are “near all-time highs.” Wages for most workers, meanwhile, have been stagnant for decades. (Photo: Jason Hargrove/Flickr/cc)

Only 0.1 percent of full-time workers earning the minimum wage can afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment in any state in the U.S., but judging by their tax agenda, the Republican Party and President Donald Trump appear to feel it is massive corporations and billionaires—not American workers—who need an income boost. Continue reading →

Editorial Note:
This needs to become a national campaign. There is enough support, with 70% of Americans wishing to see Citizens United overturned. Transparency of the politicians voting in state and national congresses is part of the foundation of democracy, not the influx of dark money and votes contrary to constituent benefits.

Popular memes calling for politicians to wear the logos of their corporate sponsors have circulated the internet for years, but the suggestion may soon be a reality for California legislators. In the next week, a potential ballot measure, submitted to the Office of the Attorney General in October, is expected to receive title and summary for the 2016 election, meaning its advocates will be able to collect signatures in order to secure its official place on the ballot. The proposed law would require legislators and candidates to sport the emblems of groups that donate money to their campaigns.

As the advocacy group that launched the measure, California is Not for Sale, muses:“Imagine this: a California Senator is speaking on the floor and proposes a bill he just drafted that will give oil companies huge tax advantages. Now imagine if on his jacket, he was wearing Chevron, Shell, and BP logos – some of his top ten contributors. Our law will bring this under-the-table-corruption to the surface and expose these politicians who take political contributions in exchange for favors for what they really are: corrupt.”Continue reading →

Mega-merger between pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Allergan could lead to higher drug prices, watchdogs warn

The so-called “corporate inversion” would allow Pfizer to profit from a lower corporate tax rate in Allergan’s home country of Ireland. (Photo: Chris Potter/flickr/cc)

Big Pharma just became Huge Pharma.

Creating the world’s largest drugmaker—and paving the way for higher pharmaceutical prices—Viagra-maker Pfizer Inc. and Allergan PLC, which manufactures Botox, said Monday that they would merge in a so-called inversion deal worth up to about $155 billion.

The takeover “would be the largest inversion ever,” according to the Wall Street Journal, allowing Pfizer to profit from a lower corporate tax rate in Allergan’s home country of Ireland.

The LA Timesreported that the deal “is likely to fuel critics’ concerns that consumers would pay even more for drugs as competition declines among manufacturers, insurers and retailers.”

As Gustav Ando, research director for the business information and consulting company IHS Life Sciences, told the Washington Post: “This merger isn’t meant to benefit patients, it isn’t meant to innovate in any kind of way…and certainly the benefits won’t be passed on to consumers.”

Addressing this aspect of the deal, presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Monday that the merger “would be a disaster for American consumers who already pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.”

What’s more, Sanders added, “[i]t also would allow another major American corporation to hide its profits overseas.”

While Pfizer cried poor in an effort to justify the merger—saying the U.S. corporate tax regime was forcing it to compete against foreign rivals “with one hand tied behind our back”—the coalition Americans for Tax Fairness showed earlier this month that the company had in fact “dramatically overstated its corporate tax rates” and was already enjoying a significant competitive advantage over those who pay their fair share.

And a Citizens for Tax Justice report released last month found that Pfizer has a stunning 151 subsidiaries in known foreign tax havens—more than all but five other Fortune 500 corporations.

As U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a speech on corporate tax reform last week, “Only one problem with the over-taxation story: It’s not true. There is a problem with the corporate tax code, but that isn’t it. It’s not that taxes are far too high for giant corporations, as the lobbyists claim. No, the problem is that the revenue generated from corporate taxes is far too low.”

On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department unveiled new rules aiming to curb tax-lowering inversion deals. But even at the time, analysts said “there was scarce evidence they would stop the biggest inversion of them all, between Pfizer Inc and Allergan Plc.” The Obama administration has said Congressional action is necessary to eliminate corporate inversions for good.

As we follow a national conversation, changes that reflect a deeper shift in the way American law is perceived begin to surface

If we were really to live by natural law, there wouldn’t be any discussion about mining the Grand Canyon or giving away portions of it to multi-national mining operations. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

When Rowan County, KY clerk Kim Davis was arrested and jailed for contempt of court, a national conversation began. Some declared this was the beginning of the jailing of Christians. Others sided with the ruling from the Supreme Court that removed any restrictions for issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.

Somewhere in the midst of this, we heard Davis’ attorney argue that “natural law” had precedence over “national law” as the basis for the merits of her case. Applied here in a very narrow sense, we now must step back and bring to light what that would actually mean in a nation that, until now, has relied on a legislative system of establishing laws and a judicial system for examining the application of those laws in a civilized society.

“Theunwrittenbody of universalmoralprinciplesthatunderlietheethicalandlegalnorms by whichhumanconduct is sometimes evaluatedandgoverned.Naturallaw is oftencontrastedwithpositive law,whichconsists of thewrittenrulesandregulations enacted by government.”

With this argument of “natural law” in mind, we have to go back to the basic principles laid out for humans when creation took place. Mankind was to be conservators of the earth; preserving, protecting and conserving earth and her resources for future generations. There could be no laws allowing for pollution of air, water or soil. There could be no laws that allowed for the extraction of natural gas, oil, coal, ore, and most precious minerals mined from the earth in the industrial age methods of stripping the earth of everything else in the process.

Natural law would not allow for corporations to be considered people too, in any court of law. Natural law would treat all people, the crowning achievement of the Maker’s creation, as equal without discrimination based on origins, choices or inherent forces. Natural law would remove all borders and fences, all status of “legal” versus “illegal” immigrant and instead react as citizens in the EU have done with the recent refugee crisis. They would treat these people as heroes and provide all basic needs as soon as possible.

Under “natural law,” there is no need for a USCIS (United States Citizenship & Immigration Services. There is no need for war over oil, money or specific land masses. The list goes on.

When our Constitution was written, the founders knew what it was to have state-sponsored religion. They knew humans do not all think, believe or live the same. They knew this was a problem in England and sought to establish this grand experiment in democracy based on an establishment of “National Law” and a system whereby these laws are able to be examined and adjusted as society’s needs changed.

So the argument now of “National Law” as opposed to “natural law” falls flat on its face. It underscores what is really happening here: that when white Christian privileged people are offended, they will go to no limit to cherry-pick scripture for Bible verses to support their arguments. They will rally together for support and ignore the fact that they are trampling on the very Constitution and Bill of Rights that allows for their grandstanding.

If they believe their Bible, they would understand God punishes the sinner; not another individual. They would be horrified to know if their children disobeyed, they are to take them outside the city and stone them to death, if they are to act on Old Testament law.

In the long run, groups or individuals do not get to have their “laws” supersede the Supreme Court. If that were the case, not a single corporation could ever be brought to trial on any charge – ever, after being ruled to be “people” by the Supreme Court. They would simply say they were acting on their beliefs.

So here’s the question: Do you want to live where laws are clearly established so everyone knows and understands them, or do you believe, as those who support Kim Davis do, that we should live in a world where any individual’s interpretation of religious text has more merit than laws or courts?

With TTIP negotiations set to continue in July, doctors in the United Kingdom have vowed to fight the deal. (Photo: Alex Proimos/cc/flickr)

Doctors in the United Kingdom are warning that passage of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will mean certain death for the country’s public healthcare system, opening the door for privatization and lawsuits from the United States’ for-profit medical industry.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association (BMA) in Liverpool on Tuesday, Dr. Henry McKee of Belfast warned members that “if there is anything resembling an [National Health Service] by the time this treaty is in negotiation, it won’t survive this treaty.”

“The correct motion is to kill this treaty dead, not to tolerate it sneaking in and mugging us,” he added. Continue reading →

About 3 months ago, two properties adjacent to ours were put on the market.

The first house was a foreclosure, currently owned by Fannie Mac. We expect this property to be on the market quite some time, as it has not been updated since the original owner bought it in the early 1960s. We have nicknamed it the squirrel condo, as the 15-foot rotted facia along the roof line has been chewed by the little tree rats, and they have gained access to the attic. We also call it a beehive, as the siding is so damaged and rotten that bees have infested all accessible areas and chase any lawn mower away from their protected territory.

The first time a contractor came to mow this property after it was listed, they damaged our lawn with an eighteen foot arc that cut through our sod and destroyed our lawn up to a foot and a half over the property boundary. We estimate the actual value of this home to be about half the listed price, and pray any potential buyer has the wisdom to have an independent inspector check it over before signing a purchase agreement. We have reported the roof line to the city environmental officer, who is supposed to enforce codes that would require repair.

The other property, an identical house to ours without some of the add-ons this house received, just sold. I met my new neighbors today. Continue reading →